


attachment

by apisdn



Series: talk therapy saves lives [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Plans to go to therapy, References to Depression, Slavery, Therapy, Well - Freeform, we're not quite there yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:54:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23126599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apisdn/pseuds/apisdn
Summary: In which Obi-Wan Kenobi has a small mental breakdown, turns to google for help, frantically attempts to locate the wikihow for raising traumatized ex-slave padawans, and decides that maybe the Jedi way is inferior to talk therapy when it comes to dealing with emotions.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Series: talk therapy saves lives [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662367
Comments: 33
Kudos: 398
Collections: Best Fics





	attachment

**Author's Note:**

> when I first entered therapy, I was very much against the idea. I'd been raised in a very show-no-emotions sort of a household and the idea of therapy was shameful in the extreme. One of the things my therapist did to help me reconcile with it was to talk about fictional characters that could have used some support. For many reasons, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker were near the top of the list.
> 
> That spawned this au which will be a series of short stories centered around the question 'what would the SW universe look like if the Kenobi/Skywalker pair had good mental health and a functioning support system?'
> 
> The answer to that question will obviously be the defeat of the sith. Talk therapy saves lives. I mean, it saved mine didn't it?

With his master dead, and the boy--oh force the boy--somehow under his supervision Obi-Wan really didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

He didn’t want to mention it to anyone, but he had come very, very close to falling during that quintessential duel and even now that it was over the only thing keeping him from the edge of that morass of grief and pain was the fact that he’d pulled several muscles, broken a couple ribs, and was now on painkillers that were removing him a bit from the whole situation emotionally. Technically he was healed, but bacta treatments always left you unbearably sore so they’d been on offer, and as much as Obi-Wan wanted to avoid a dependency he also needed to hold on until some members of the council showed up. Everything would be fine then.

Yes. Everything. (except his master would still be dead and gone, impaled on that burning red blade and no no stop no.)

He grabbed the pill bottle. Really he should meditate, but touching the force at the moment felt rather like poking a raw wound--like touching the special hidden place where he’d bottled up almost a decade of pure attachment to his Master. They’d wanted to send him to the Agri-Corps for his emotions once. They’d probably been right. Even Obi-Wan hadn’t known how intense it had been until (the second side of the lightsaber piercing right through Qui-Gon’s center and ripping burning across the open force bond no stop no.)

Just until the Jedi arrived. Everything would be fine.

\------

Despite the fact that the child was under his purview, they had never actually spoken. Before… Before Obi-Wan had dismissed him, been jealous of him (while he was admitting to his emotional faults he might as well do all of them) and put a rather large helping of blame on him for the betrayal he’d felt when his Master had dismissed him in the council chamber. (oh force he was a terrible Jedi. In retrospect his near fall was no surprise but how could he… he’d failed Qui-Gon’s teachings as surely as he’d failed Qui-Gon himself when that horrible red blade nonononono)

After… what had happened, they’d been given a suite of rooms. The kid had been asleep by the time Obi-Wan had returned from the doctors, and honestly he hadn’t thought much beyond collapsing himself, still high enough on pain meds that he’d managed a full twelve hours before waking up (to a nightmare of red NO)

The next day… The child had been taken and trotted around to be congratulated. They’d tried to take Obi-Wan too, but he’d pled pain and Jedi custom--the need to meditate and recenter himself after the harrowing events--and then had proceeded to spend the day lying on the floor staring at the ceiling and doing nothing. He’d originally gotten up to make tea, but it had been too much to think about, and the carpet was plush anyway.

He was still doing that when the child had been returned, dumped unceremoniously on the doorstep, and continued to do it through several minutes of pint-sized scrutiny.

“Why are you on the floor?” asked the child.

“I don’t know.” said Obi-Wan.

The child left.

Typical.

Everyone left.

\------

Obi-Wan was incredibly shocked when the kid came back. Or rather, he would have been, had he been capable of feeling anything but soul-deep pain and the crushing enormity of a world without Qui-Gon in it. Still, he mustered enough energy to sit up against the couch (though it was too much to get up on it) and look at the kid in a confused fashion.

The child handed Obi-Wan a glass of water. Obi-Wan wasn’t really sure what to do with it.

“Drink.” said the kid.

“What?” asked Obi-Wan.

“I don’t think you’ve drunk anything today. Everyone has to drink. So drink.”

Obi-Wan drank the water.

“Have you eaten?” asked the child.

Obi-Wan took a few seconds to answer. “No.” he said.

“You should.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. The rooms were equipped with a tea service, but no kitchen, and he really didn’t want to go out into the more public areas of the palace.

“But you need to.”

“I don’t… I can’t go out right now.”

“Can you eat?”

Obi-Wan paused, and really looked at him for the first time. There was an emotion on his face that Obi-Wan didn’t understand, but it looked perilously close to the type of face Qui-Gon would make right before adopting another pathetic life form (Oh god, Qui-Gon)

The child turned and left.

\------

When he came back again, Obi-Wan was less surprised. He had with him the tiny bundle that was everything he owned. From it, he withdrew two ration bars clearly stolen from the Queen’s ship.

That, Obi-Wan was not surprised about. After… After several missions actually, but after Melida-Daan especially he’d liked to have some non-perishables at hand. Just in case. The child had been a slave. He would want that too.

The child handed one to Obi-Wan. Then he went and got more water.

They ate together on the floor.

\------

“Why are you helping me?” asked Obi-Wan, a few minutes later. His eyes were on his wrapper, folding and unfolding. He couldn’t bear to look at the child beside him--Qui-Gon’s last legacy and a complete stranger.

“Mom says when you’re sold you have to help the people you have. She says that if everybody does that, you can know that the people you had before are being helped too.”

“I don’t have anyone.” said Obi-Wan.

“Nuh-uh.” said the child. “I got sold. So you’re the people I have.”

“I don’t think it works that way.” said Obi-Wan.

“My mom is smarter than you.” said the child. Obi-Wan should probably call him by his name.

\------

Later, they each went to the fresher, and Obi-Wan changed into clothes that weren’t covered in sweat and blood, but afterwards they lingered in the sitting room. The prospect of returning to the massive cold bed the Naboo had given him was not attractive. It was too… empty.

“Do you know what’s going to happen to me?” asked the child--Anakin.

“I don’t know.” said Obi-Wan. “My master... asked me to train you.”

“The Jedi said I was too old.” pointed out Anakin. The anger he’d felt about that before seemed to be gone, but there was still fear, massive and full of the unknowable. It occurred to Obi-Wan that--removed as he was from his mother and his whole world--Qui-Gon had been all he had too. Obi-Wan had lost his master, but Anakin had lost him too. Perhaps he hadn’t… loved… him like Obi-Wan had but he’d still been… he’d been the one who Anakin had trusted to care for him. Anakin had lost that whole future.

“Qui-Gon still asked.” said Obi-Wan. “You… I will help you.”

“For him.” said Anakin in a small voice. “But-”

Some buried instinct he didn’t understand caused Obi-Wan to take hold of Anakin’s hand and look him in the eyes. “Not for him.” he said, then he sighed. He didn’t know how to say it in a way that Anakin would understand but he had to try. “You’re the people I have too.” he said finally.

Anakin nodded and it was as simple as that. Because whatever else they might have been, whatever else might have happened, Anakin was a child who needed help, and Obi-Wan was a Jedi, and at the core of his whole being was the inescapable truth that helping people was what Jedi were made for.

He just needed to hold out until the Masters got there, and then everything would make sense again.

\------

The next few days happened in a rush.

The councillors came, Qui-Gon’s funeral… happened, and Obi-Wan and Anakin spent their nights together in Obi-Wan’s massively oversize bed because they didn’t want to be alone and because nobody they wanted to be there was. They clung to each other because they were who they had.

Obi-Wan was beginning to think that Anakin’s mother was a very wise woman.

After that, they were taken back to the temple, separated, and didn’t see each other for two days while Anakin was put through an intensive treatment plan to rid him of the parasites, accumulated damage, and filth that came with being a slave.

Obi-Wan returned to his and Qui-Gon’s quarters, and wondered what would happen. Then he got tired of wondering and lived up to Qui-Gon’s legacy by going to argue with the Jedi High Council.

The verdict was this: nobody wanted to train Anakin, they all wanted him gone, and nothing he could do could convince them otherwise, but if the mind-healers cleared Obi-Wan for duty after the shock of battling a darksider and psychic backlash of breaking a padawan bond before Anakin got out of the healers they would honor Qui-Gon’s decision and allow him to take the boy on as a padawan learner.

Obi-Wan was then faced with a dilemma. He could go to the mind healers, have the swirling mass of emotions blocked off and let out in bits and pieces over several months of guided meditation thereby gaining peace of mind and his center in the force, or he could shove it deep, hope they never found it and keep the boy he was quickly becoming attached to (because Obi-Wan clearly was incapable of following the Jedi code)

Obviously, Obi-Wan chose Anakin.

———

The first night they spent in the former Jinn-Kenobi quarters, Obi-Wan put Anakin to bed in his old room and fell asleep on the couch. He woke an hour later to quiet sobbing coming from the bathroom.

When he went to investigate, he found Anakin sitting on the floor with a sharp piece of metal digging into the meat of his own leg.

“Ani!” He cried softly, “what’s wrong?”

Anakin looked up, distraught. “They wouldn’t take it out.” he said. “They wouldn’t take it out and I can’t find it and I need it gone.”

It took a moment for Obi-Wan to process it, but when he did… “The transmitter!” He realized “but why would they…”

“It’s inert.” scowled Anakin. “They saw no reason to remove a ‘benign’ implant with ‘invasive’ surgery.” It was clear what Anakin feelings on it were.

“Oh force,” said Obi-Wan. “Oh…”

“I need it gone.” said Anakin, yanking on Obi-Wan’s hand where he’d grabbed Anakin’s bloody wrist to keep the makeshift shiv away from his leg. “And I know where it is now, please-“

“Yes, Ani, of course, but if you do it yourself you might permanently injure yourself. Please let a doctor do it.”

“They wouldn’t!”

Obi-Wan gently removed the shiv from his hand and gathered him into his lap, heedless of the blood. “The Jedi healers aren’t the only doctors on Coruscant Ani. If they won’t do it we’ll find someone else.”

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure how he’d go about doing that, but he’d been with Anakin for nearly a week and knew how important it was to him. Perhaps he didn’t understand it, but he knew Anakin needed it and getting him what he needed was the only thing Obi-Wan knew to do. He was just trying to hold on.

“Do you promise?” asked Anakin.

“I do.” said Obi-Wan gravely. “You… you are free Anakin. You don’t need to keep it if you don’t want to.”

“Then why won’t you let me get rid of it?”

Obi-Wan tried to think of a way to convince him. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I’d rather that than have this.” said Anakin, jabbing cruelly at the leg.

Obi-Wan pulled him even closer. “Please…” He said. “Ani… if you cut it out yourself you won’t be able to use the leg. That… that’s exactly what would happen if it was activated. You don’t have to do that anymore please… let me bandage it and I promise I’ll find a doctor as soon as I can.”

Anakin looked suspicious, but he relented. “If you can’t do it in a week I’m cutting it out.”

“Okay, just… okay. I’ll do it by then.”

Obi-Wan was deeply worried that Anakin would try again before then, but it was better than nothing.

Still, they would be sleeping together in Qui-Gons bed that night.

———

Obi-Wan awoke several hours before dawn with a silent gasp. His shields were nowhere near as good as a mind healer's block and his problems were back with a vengeance. He was bitterly grateful then that he and Anakin had yet to establish a training bond, because spillover would be inevitable and Anakin had enough of his own nightmares without looking in on Obi-Wan’s.

Anakin stirred in his sleep as Obi-Wan sat up, but a calming touch of the force had him nuzzling into Obi-Wan’s hip, returned to the depths of his slumber.

Obi-Wan wasn’t really sure what to do about that. He was rarely sure what to do with Anakin, who was clingy at the best of times—or at least in the times Obi-Wan had seen.

Eventually his hand settled in the boy's hair and he gave up on leaving. There was a data pad in reach, and Obi-Wan needed to figure out what the fuck he was doing. In the absence of available advice from the Jedi (Qui-Gon was gone, and nobody else understood and Qui-Gon was gone and Obi-Wan could never tell him that he--nonono) he turned to the Holonet.

The first task was the easy one. ‘Slave chip removal surgery near me.’

And there was a non-profit clinic willing to do it free of charge--and even better, anonymously so their records could never get back to the owners. Obi-Wan scheduled an appointment for their next slot in two days, and in less than half an hour he was back to his starting point with several much larger problems.

Again, he decided to start with Anakin. He’d taken several psychology units as part of his education, but that only left him more aware that he had no idea what he was doing. Jedi psychology courses had more to do with lying, politics, and mass cultural attitudes than dealing with trauma. Unsurprisingly the Jedi wanted little to do with emotions--their own or others.

‘Mental health child trauma slavery’

It really looked ugly, all those key-words typed out like that, and Obi-Wan wished deeply that none of them belonged to Anakin. They did though, so he soldiered on, and tried the first site that wasn’t a salacious news story. ‘The Psychological Rehabilitation of Victims of Modern Slavery’

It was an academic paper, for which he was grateful, because he didn’t think he would have made it through the thing if it hadn’t been as dry as dust.

Within moments, Obi-Wan had opened a document and was taking notes. This was his reality now, and he would have to deal with it.

\-----

Several hours later, Obi-Wan had… a tentative plan. Firstly, Anakin was going to need to see a mind healer. Obi-Wan didn’t think a Jedi one would be right either. Those weren’t therapists, they were telepaths skilled in correcting force issues. From what he’d read about what Anakin would need, that wasn’t it. He had no experience in any sort of emotional situation, but he was fairly sure suppressing them wasn’t the right way. Which was another thing he needed to deal with now because there were several aspects of mental health that apparently ran counter to the Jedi code and he… didn’t know what to do.

Ever since his near-fall, Obi-Wan felt almost as if he was slip-sliding into a crisis of faith. The Jedi way wasn’t helping, his emotions wouldn’t release themselves into the Force like they were supposed to--like he’d been promised they would--and he didn’t know what to do about it. And all the research he was doing--which he knew was accurate because Obi-Wan was very good at research--was saying things that ran counter to everything he’d ever believed.

Completely of their own volition, his fingertips brushed over the very first line of his notes pulled up alongside the holopage, a copied statement from the very first paper. ‘Healthy psychological development in children is dependent on the availability of protective attachment figures’.

That was anathema to Obi-Wan. To everything he’d ever believed. Attachment was… wrong on the deepest level for a Jedi.

And yet… ‘Healthy psychological development in children is dependent on the availability of protective attachment figures’. There it was in blunt terms, as if it was a universal fact. And Obi-Wan… he believed it.

Anakin had been a slave, and yet his mother had raised him to be kind. Her teachings were everywhere and sometimes Obi-Wan felt like every other sentence started off with ‘my mom says’. He had issues, obviously, but they were nowhere near as horrible as some of the case studies he’d read and he knew--with the clarity of the Force--that Shmi Skywalker had been the thing that made the difference. She’d kept Anakin safe through everything, shielded him from all that she could, and held him together through one of the worst situations it was possible to live in. She’d protected him in a very attached way, and that protection was important.

Anakin might have been a slave, but he’d had someone to protect him, someone he’d just lost and would likely never see again. He had no one now. And Obi-Wan… he knew deeply and painfully what it was like to have no one to protect you.

It was probably another instance of failure to uphold the code, but Obi-Wan’s whole life was divided into two categories--without Qui-Gon and with Qui-Gon. Without Qui-Gon everything was a mass of confusion--fear cloaked in anger and a burning wish for someone else to take care of all the problems in the world. With Qui-Gon… being with Qui-Gon had been like having steady ground underfoot, an unyielding assurance of support. Anakin was going to need that.

That was why items two and three on Obi-Wan’s list, right after Anakin--Therapy, were Shmi Skywalker--Ask Padme? and Establish Force Bond.

If Shmi wasn’t going to be around, then Obi-Wan was going to have to establish a training bond quickly and deeply. He was going to have to follow that feat by becoming a good enough Master that Anakin wouldn’t feel a loss of support from his change in situation. And while doing that he was going to have to be… attached. Which he already was, a bit, but he was going to have to figure out how to balance that with the Jedi way and do it right and healthily and… fuck.

Obi-Wan had a sinking feeling that the traditional Master/Padawan dynamic would never be achieved.

The list gained another entry. Number six. Look Up Parenting Books.

\------

When true morning came upon the Jedi temple, Obi-Wan was still with Anakin though he would vehemently deny that any cuddling was going on. The datapad had been set aside and Obi-Wan was attempting meditation, for all that he was unable to do it properly. Still, he’d found that touching the force outside of him and ignoring what was within was better than nothing.

“Obi-Wan,” mumbled Anakin sleepily.

“Yes Anakin?” asked Obi-Wan

“What’s going to happen today?”

“We’re going to get you clothes, figure out your schooling and…” Obi-Wan trailed off.

“What?” asked Anakin when his patience ran out.

“If you want, I would like to--that is if you’re all right with it--I think it may be wise to, well, it will happen eventually but I think sooner is better to do it. I… want to establish a training bond.”

“Okay.” said Anakin. “That’s today. What about after?”

“After?” said Obi-Wan, “We… get on with living I suppose. I don’t know.”

“That’s okay.” said Anakin. “My mom says it doesn’t matter what happens as long as you have yourself and your people.”

“Your mother is much smarter than I am.” said Obi-Wan.

Anakin smiled as brilliantly as a double sunrise. “She really is.”

\-----

In the end, Anakin would only consent to therapy if Obi-Wan did it to. In the end, Obi-Wan was grateful for the excuse. They set the sessions back to back starting the week after the transmitter surgery, and for the first time in weeks, Obi-Wan felt hope.


End file.
